First Aid Kit All Dog Owners Need to Have

For any dog owner, it’s important that you always have a first aid kit if anything goes wrong with your dog. Items in first aid kits will mostly help with flesh wounds, but there is some medication that you can keep in your kit to help your dog as well.

First aid kits allow you to quickly treat your dog in a dire emergency, before you can take them to an emergency or regular veterinarian. If you don’t have any medical experience, it would also be beneficial to take a first aid class, so when the time comes that you need that kit, all of the tools won’t be useless.

First, you’re going to need items for any cuts, gashes, or nicks. For this, you don’t want to use regular adhesive bandages like Band-Aids. You want to use the non-sticking bandages that you can wrap around the wounded area, so when you or the vet takes it off, it won’t take a big clump of fur with it.

Be sure to have gauze in case of any bleeding injuries. You should also have some blood clotting solution or powder, so you can stop the bleeding faster. One good product for stopping bleeding is ClotIt, who actually sells a full animal first aid kit in addition to their blood clotting products.

It’s also important to take your dog’s age into consideration. For puppies, bleeding injuries are more serious, because they have less blood in them. It’s extremely important that you stop any continuous blood flow immediately on your puppy.

Tranquilizers?

Puppies may also be more likely to have a conniption when you’re trying to treat them, so a few tranquilizers may be useful as well. Be sure that the tranquilizers aren’t too powerful – you don’t want your dog to overdose on medications that were meant for 100+ pound dogs.

For adult dogs, tranquilizers shouldn’t be necessary if you’ve raised them to be calm. However, if they’re still rowdy and rambunctious, have some appropriately dosed tranquilizers in your kit.

Tranquilizers can help you wrap wounds where your dog may not like being touched. For example, if your dog is sensitive about having its legs touched, then it may bite and be uncooperative when you’re trying to wrap it while they’re scared and in pain. For older dogs, it would be best to just add on to your adult dog kit, and bring some medications for them if they get sick.